Follow-up from July 4 @BoST call:
Add a vision short statement in the OSCEdays Strategic Framework document on Google drive. Go to page 5 and ignore the rest, for the moment.
Review the list of organization choices. The list will be used in Loomio to decide which one we’ll pursue.
a. Current informal network
b. Association (non-profit, member based professional organization). Example: SWE
c. Social enterprise (commercial enterprise with social impact greater or equal to financial return…

2.3 One-day Workshop - aiming for August. See below what we discussed at Call #19

“How about we organize that workshop after we take that decision on Loomio so we have one step down. Some people can meet physically and pull the rest of us in.
Sh: Yes, like myself and Segio can meet. I don’t know if Erika can meet.”

##4 Workflow Diagnostics

Sharon: Follow-up on using Jaime’s tool to help get OSCE projects off the ground. We chatted about testing this Beta tool with a small group of the OSCE BoST. Please answer Sharon’s question if you want to have access to Jaime’s tool.

Re: 3 Workflow Diagnostics
As explained in the call, there is a proposal from @Jaime to test his Beta workflow diagnostics approach with OSCE projects. I think it looks like a great opportunity to avail of Jaime’s insights and also contribute knowledge for the proposed BoST workshop. Please reply with a yes/no if you would like to participate (even a sub-working @BoST group of 4/5 would suffice). I have an overview document of the workflow if anyone wants to see it.

##5 Forum hosting fee
Decide how to collect it soon, as payment is due.

##6 Events Calendar -

In the last call @Gien suggested that we should add an events calendar to the website because now we have many events occurring all throughout the year. Please can we add it? (Sharon)

Hi @BoST, I’ve been out for a bit due to family priorities, but I am aiming to be there tonight as well and have formulated a few thoughts on OSCEdays strategies in the strategy document on page 18/19. I have noticed that most of the thinking goes along the line of a non-profit, with a strong focus on values, which is fine, but I wanted ot bring in a bit of a different approach, too. Please feel free to edit, discuss and comment, my input is meant to provoce some discussion along the strategic line of “what to sell and communicate”?

@Jeddlee_Kinnii & @Qing – I tried to add you on my Skype. In case it did not work from my side please add me. My Skype ID is: Lars2i

@BoST
If noone else wants to do it I’d like to volunteer to moderate this call. Sorry in advance. I will be a bit pushy. We have a lot a lot a lot to discuss but should not go longer than 2 hours. If you want more time on a certain issue just let me know.

Notes:
Qing introduced herself as a new BoST member. She offered to translate in Chinese website content and documents we recommend as essential.

Lars gave an update on the 2017 events in Berlin. They were a great success with over 800 people attending and many challenges worked on.

Strategic Framework:
Frans has reviewed all the current inputs to the draft and added his vision statement and branding recommendations. He emphasized the commercial aspect of our future organization, including selling products and books authored by OSCEdays people.

Lars explained his inputs to the draft. His vision is to make OSCEdays a 365 days events/tutorials. Find new partners for infrastructure projects, celebrate success. Agrees for a need to find a legal structure, the association application started last year can be revived quickly. Frans will help. The association charter in Germany is flexible, so it will be a good start followed by branches in other locations and/or other forms of organization.

There is a broad agreement that we should work on discrete projects and show results that are convincing about the feasibility of OSCE model we stand for.

A lot of debate on what should come first: decide on the organization type or on a vision statement. Seigo and Sharon will find the common theme in the current vision statements and consolidate them in 3 options to be put to vote.

On the draft document, a lot of groundwork is done, it’s a matter of consolidating current work, simplify it for clarity and relevance. Sharon and Seigo will re-write the draft. Previous version will be saved for tracking everybody’s inputs.

Sharon: Also I really think emphasising the NETWORK and PLATFORM is really useful. I don’t think we necessarily use this very well in our communications.

Qing has an opportunity “Projektträger Jülich” https://www.ptj.de/en/start , but we need funding and in order to get funding we need a legal structure.

Frans: It is possible to “borrow” a partner org for now for funding gs, and start an own at the same time, because this needs some time

Gien: In our Saturday workshop with Dr. Jose Ramos, his group was experimenting with Cobudget:

developed by Enspiral.
Where funding comes in to an organization…members can contribute money in “buckets” and they can they decide which project it goes to.
Funding agency can be just an organizational bucket.

Gien: in terms of monetizing products and service, we have been engaging Dr. Jose Ramos with his concept of Cosmo-Localization. This is getting away from a centralized store and instead, allowing local producers to download the open source design files for local production:http://actionforesight.net/category/article/

The centralized online shop is following the existing capitalist paradigm and that seems to nullify the potential impact of open source. For instance, in South Africa, we intend to innovate our ecohome technologies and share them globally , including across South AFrica so that local communities have the opportunity for local production to create their own livelihoods in their local communities. It’s based on the idea that there is enough for everyone. We enable individuals who want to take the risk to produce and benefit in their own local community.

For project work, a matrix with projects on the columns and global participants on the rows…people can just join whatever project they want to. Then the popular projects float up to the top and it gets naturally prioritized within the network. Each project then becomes a Digital Autonomous Organization (DAO) and can get funding if it looks like it has impact.

Silvia: We need to remember that we need a long-term plan, where will we be in five years, we also need an answer when we’re talking partnerships and event organisation, not to mention everything else that has been said on projects…I would not like to post-pone a decision on this, one option is to stay as we are, at least we allow everyone to choose their preference and at least we are democratically deciding things. I agree with Lars, things are nearly ready. We risk losing people if we don’t make some money, which is also in support of what Frans is saying, we need to be both conceptual and commercial. My position is that we need to agree on a certain structure and as soon as possible. If we can do the association in Germany like Lars said, then great, if it’s very flexible.

Seigo: Is there an interim position whereby that OSCEdays can form national legal forms e.g. Germany, UK in line with OSCEdays vision. In the longer term we could potentially pursue Gien’s idea around DAO

Gien: Another possibility is to talk to an impactful organization to see how they went about it. For example, to speak to a strategic member of ouishare to get their insights on how they formed their organization. Did they go through the same growing pains?

Sharon has added a poll for the workshop to review the updated strategic framework and another one to test Jaime’s tool. Please vote.

Forum hosting fee
Lars is looking into better options for the forum, as more capacity is needed and more technical support available in English and 24/7. Short-term the fee is covered, but we need a long-term solution. Lars will check with our partner on how to use the money they are holding for us.

Events Calendar
It would be great to have one, but it’s not clear how easy it is to add to the website and give everybody access to modify it. Sharon will try to work this out.

Lars suggests to change the way local events are named to start with the date, so that it’s easier to find them on the forum. An interim solution until we can add a live calendar.

SUMMARY

1 Sharon and Seigo will come up with 3 vision statements. There will be a decision made on Loomio on which one we adopt.

2 Sharon and Seigo will re-work the Strategic Framework draft and have it ready for the workshop

3 Sharon will add Doodle polls for workshop and test. Done. Vote.

4 Lars and Frans will find out how to define the German association’s status so that a democratic and global participation process and membership are possible.

I very much like the idea of a book or series of books. I added it as a project on Google drive and made you the lead and myself the sponsor. Of course, that can be changed, but I would like to pursue this idea and get something tangible, original out of our work, besides much needed funding for the community.

The Loomio proposal for the vision and mission statement has been set up.

The Doodle for the strategy workshop is completed and the date that most people are available is 8th September.

Perhaps it is an idea to share these developments through our communications (twitter, newsletter?) so that we get some community engagement / response? Also, Iit might make sense to communicate that we are in the process of developing OSCEdays2.0 to start to get some momentum and interest and that more updates will be coming in the next weeks and months?

As promised here is info about the democratic model in a german association. It is basically just posting what we had in our old statutes. Lars, Qing and Frans were sitting together and discussing it and shared the same opinion that it is still good! We already started to discuss where we could find a “chief”. As Janosch who stood up for it last time is not available anymore.

Hey @BoST
I have been reviewing the statutes we had developed in early 2016 and I think it is still good in design and probably also mission statement. Check this topic - to find the statutes and also links to all related sub discussions held back then. All the questions we are facing right now have been discussed 2 years ago. Probably a lot of the stuff is still good.
Here are extractions:
Structure
In the video you can see the basics of its inner workings.
[image]
I forgot t…

Thanks for the work and the polls. But I feel a little bit lost, maybe I am not smart enough. But it is probably good to explain it also for others. Always provide context.

###1. Vision vs. Mission?
What is the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement? What do we need it for? I could not explain any of those and be sure we are on the same page. So this means it is not documented (presented) well.

###2. Unclear Options By Loomio
When I click on the Loomio I get this view:

Maybe Loomio is broken just in my browsers. But there was no chance to expand the text and read it. The only chance I have is to click on the document where you created the choices. The document is messy to an outsider and I can never be sure which of the options have made it into the final selection.

The only chance I had is to click on „see results“. And when I wanted to add a comment… there was not enough space to make my point.

I still don’t really understand why we switched to Loomio? Loomio is in every detail worse than our forum. The only thing it has that our forum does not have is that you can vote. But I would strongly suggest that we have all the discussions and polls always represented here on our forum. And then just for the Poll part move over to Loomio.

###3. Communicate ?
And this brings me right to problem Nr. 3. You suggest that we communicate on Twitter etc. what we are doing right now. But how? What link to share? If I am lost between all the external documents on Google drive, threads in Loomio, threads here… No outsider will ever have the chance to pick any of this up nor will it look good from the outside.

Is the bottom – some comment – under some BoST call the right place to share the links to two ground laying important polls? Presented without any easy summary of context?

Could we have a topic (please a topic!) that pulls all the strings of the current redefinment process together? Then we have a chance to invite ppl. from the outside world. Maybe something like this.

//

##Workflow Diagnostics, Documentation & Toolchain Debate

All of this made me realize we really need a workflow, documentation and tool chain debate. So I started it here with a statement:

[image]
Hey @BoST
I think we developed some issues lately in our workflow that need to be addressed. And I realized we never really spoke about our workflow. That is a problem. Let’s start a process. Here is how I see it:
Open Source
In our blog you can read about the OSCEdays’ Open Source Workflow and all its benefits. Open source software projects structure their collaboration process in a way that it creates documentation in parallel – as a side effect – and in a quality that enables …

Thanks for the work and the polls. But I feel a little bit lost, maybe I am not smart enough. But it is probably good to explain it also for others. Always provide context.

1. Vision vs. Mission Statement

A vision statement described a prefered optimal future state

A mission statement describes what you are doing, how and for/with who.

(Related to this question I would like to suggest that while I think we need to have these elements in place for our organisation, we should use less corporate language to describe ourselves).

2. Unclear Options By Loomio

If you click on ‘Show Results’ at the bottom-left of the page a new section appears and you can see the whole sentence for each option. This is as much as I have figured out (perhaps there is a better way):

I think you have misunderstood this comment. I don’t necessarily mean to share the polls/documents, but meant that we should communicate, in general, about the latest developments that we are undergoing/planning.

"Is the bottom – some comment – under some BoST call the right place to share the links to two ground laying important polls? Presented without any easy summary of context?

Could we have a topic (please a topic!) that pulls all the strings of the current redefinment process together? Then we have a chance to invite ppl. from the outside world. Maybe something like this."

Good question! Perhaps not? I am someone who spends a fair amount of time on the forum, but I really don’t understand where the ‘right place’ for anything is.

Update: This old thread reflects more what I was thinking about when I wrote about sharing our ongoing developments with the community. Many of the questions are still relevant. For example, we could send a newsletter to the community and ask the question: What projects would you like OSCE to work on? We could provide some inspiring examples as a way to generate some enthusiasm and excitement and energy about these new developments too:

Hi @BoST +community. I wonder If we should announce a 3rd global challenge. Let’s ask the people in OSCEdays 2016 about their ideas for the association – and make them aware of it that way too :wink:
I suggest to announce it as a global challenge – people can comment in a thread. And we should also ask the question in every global reporting call.
Let’s discuss it in the @BoST Meeting on Monday. But it would be great if you also comment here in case you can’t join the @BoST Meeting.
Hi …